Dissociating contributions of ventral and dorsal striatum to reward learning

Reward learning plays a central role in decision making and adaptation. Accumulating evidence suggests that the striatum contributes enormously to reward learning but that its subregions may have distinct functions. A recent article by Tricomi and Lempert (J Neurophysiol. First published 22 October 2014, doi:10.1152/jn.00086.2014.) found that ventral striatum tracks reward value, whereas dorsolateral and dorsomedial striatum track the trialwise reward probability. In this Neuro Forum we reinterpret their findings and provide additional insights.